[Buddha-l] Re: Aama do.sa I

[Christopher Fynn]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:
> Chris,
> 
>> The Siddha medical system - still widely taught and practised in S.
> India -
>> usually traces it's origin to the Buddhist Nagarjuna (Siddha Nagarjuna).
>> According to a teacher I talked to from the Government Ayurvedic College
> in
>> Mysore, where it is taught (alongside Ayurveda and Unani) and according to
> the
>> head of the Sanskrit department of the University of Mysore, it was
> originally a
>> Buddhist medical system.
> 
> This "Nagarjuna" is also the inventor of tantra and alchemy, and the one who
> retrieved the prajnaparamita sutras on the ocean bottom from the Naga king,
> and numerous other superfeats. 


  Whatever the provenance of such
> material and its historical roots, it is not of much help when dealing with
> Asanga (who was from Gandhara -- actually Purusapura, today the militant
> Islamic stronghold of Peshawar -- and probably never got further south than
> the Ujjain area) or the Caraka-samhita. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
> 
> Dan
> 

Dan

Should we geographically compartmentalise things so much?

We do know South India had contacts by sea with China for a long period and I've 
seen theories that some of these alchemical ideas originated in China - while 
others suggest the origins were Indian and went the other way from S. India 
China. Whatever the direction - the fact that there was a flow of trade & ideas 
between S. India and China doesn't seem to be in much dispute.

More pertinently, on the other side there was sea trade between S. India and the 
Arabian Gulf /Middle East - and further West for a long time. For instance from 
the 1st Century BCE to the 2nd Century CE (before the time of Asanga) there 
seems to have been very active trade between the Roman Empire and South India. I 
don't know since I haven't looked into it, but offhand it seems likely that 
there was also sea trade between the mouth of the Indus and South India during 
the same period. Then it would have only been up the Indus (the highway of the 
day) to Purushpara/Peshawar.

I'm not of course trying to suggest that Asanga visited South India, but is it 
so far fetched to imagine that medical ideas and writings - Buddhist or 
otherwise - may have fairly easily circulated between the two areas prior to or 
during the time of Asanga?

- Chris